Beside You
by sapphireswimming
Summary: Whenever he is overwhelmed, Danny can trust his friends and family. They will always be beside him. Very angsty.


**A companion to Danny Phantom SG-1's Danniversary vid: **www .youtube. com/watch?v=6SWiPEdTxMw

**It was really hard finding a premise that worked with the song. All I came up with at first was angsty DxS (which I didn't think I could do well) and a series of everyone supporting Danny (but that felt too much like my drabble collection). But then I remembered an idea I'd stuck in the back of my head and now you have every theme in the vid twisted and turned on its angsty head. Enjoy. :3**

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**Beside You**

April 9, 2012

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Danny sat slumped against the wall, his head bowed. Trying to focus on nothing, trying to push away the vestiges of confusion and weakness and fear from the corners of his mind where they were trying to invade. He tried not to think about it, tried not to think about what had happened. As if he knew how he had gotten here in the first place. As if he knew where here was. In an abandoned room, somewhere, probably in an abandoned building stuck in the middle of nowhere. But thinking like that wouldn't help him, so he banished all thoughts from his mind, instead focusing on the darkness, the glint of metal in the darkness. Long and slow breaths.

Long and slow breaths, in and out; he could do this. He was okay. If he could just calm down, he could get himself out of this mess before anything bad happened. How to calm down when he was in a place like this, though? Well, he would just think of his friends and family. The people who really mattered in his life when his life was falling to pieces. The ones who could keep him calm when he didn't know what to do. The ones who could help him through things when they got too hard. He could just picture them in his mind, think of what they would be saying to him if they were here, imagine what they were doing this very moment, what they would think when they realized he was gone. If he could just think about them, it would be okay. He would be okay.

He would get through this. Thinking of them would keep him going until he escaped or they rescued him. He would get out of here, one way or another. It was inevitable. But until then, he had to survive.

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It was pitch black in this room. No light filtered in from the solitary door on the far wall so he couldn't tell if it was morning or night or how much time had passed since he had been here. His mental clock had been skewed by whatever had hit him on the head when this all began, so he couldn't trust the feeling that he had been here for days. It might have only been one day. Or a few hours. There was just no way to know. Then too, he had no idea how long he had been unconscious before he awoke to this place.

His mom would know, if she were here. She would be able to figure it out somehow, with her calm and calculating thought processes. She was always the methodical one. The scientific one. Even now, at home, she must know exactly how long he had been missing, down to the minutes and seconds from the moment he disappeared. She would have started planning a course of action almost immediately, running through plans, contingencies, pulling out weapons, unraveling blueprints, gathering spare parts for the specter speeder. She would be coming for him, her mind racing as regularly as clockwork until he was safe.

He could hold on for her, until she came for him.

He could hold on until she came through the door just like he knew she would, but instead of running over to wrap him in her embrace, walked up to him slowly. Warily. The same scientific mindset and calculating gaze suddenly turned cold and menacing in a way he had never dreamed possible. They were working against him. There was his mother, come to rescue him, but she didn't see _him_, she didn't see her son. She saw a specimen to be collected, studied, pried apart for the untold secrets inside. It was Phantom she saw locked up in this room. Vulnerable. Unable to do anything against the gun she raised to point straight between his eyes.

So he closed them.

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Danny looked around him, squinting, but unable to make out more than a few details of his surrounding, even with his sensitive ghostly abilities enhancing his natural vision. There wasn't much for him to see, though: a plastic card table that looked ready to collapse, a metal chair that was probably so rusted it wouldn't fold more than an inch. The single bulb and chain hanging from the ceiling looked like it belonged in a horror film and after imagining it flickering ominously, he decided he liked the dark better. He sat propped on a pile of dirty, foul smelling rags. Nothing else in the room.

Despite the overwhelming emptiness surrounding him, he could imagine someone here. Easily. He could picture his dad here. His dad would have wanted to be right at his side, protecting him from whatever was coming, comforting him with his boisterous voice, assuring him that everything was going to be alright, that he would get out of there soon. His dad would take up half of the room, making it seem much less ominous and deadly. His booming voice would fill the space; his laugh would make the chair rattle. His presence would make this whole thing bearable. Thinking of him made the darkness and silence go away, at least for a little bit.

He could stay strong as long as he imagined his father, ever happy, somehow able to find the silver lining here.

He could stay strong until his father plowed through the door, his massive girth making it a difficult task. Guns of every shape and size appeared to jump out of his Hazmat suit at odd angles, ready to attack anyone who was nearby, ready to take down the ghost responsible for kidnapping his son. Then his father's gaze snapped toward him, huddling against the wall and his huge body loomed up over him looking larger than it ever had ever appeared before. He looked like he wanted nothing more in the world to destroy him for taking away his Danny-boy. His voice shouted that he would tear him limb from limb until the room and halls echoes with the words.

Danny covered his ears as best he could.

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His hands were chained to a solid metal slab embedded deep into the wall. There weren't any loose edges for him to pry at. After countless attempts, he decided that neither ectoblasts nor ice shards nor brute strength would mark or dent or move his imprisonment. He couldn't get out of it right now, plain and simple, but it certainly wasn't from lack of trying. He continued to jerk his chains long after his wrists were bloodied and raw from the sharp metal. Although it hurt him to concede the point, he finally decided that it wasn't worth it to risk his ghostly wail because it seemed more likely to bring down the building on top of him than get him out of the handcuffs.

But he wouldn't let this finish him. This didn't mean he was defeated. He was stronger than that. And anyway, strength wasn't his only strength. Heh. But he could always figure out some other plan. He could outsmart his captors, whoever they were. Didn't he always? He came up with a plan, even if it was on the fly. And it worked, it always worked. Jazz had helped him discover how to plan and if she were here now, she would tuck her bright red hair behind one ear and pin him with that smirk he loved but said he hated. That smirk meant that she knew exactly what to do. She would be able to get him out of this place without a problem if she were here. It wouldn't pose a problem to her... not to his genius sister. He could just imagine the great big reassuring hug she would give him before she rescued him.

He wouldn't let this break him because Jazz could get him out of this.

He wouldn't let this break him until she walked in, with that no-nonsense look on her face and sat on the floor opposite him. With no smile, not even the smirk. Just a slight frown and a low, disapproving sound coming out of the back of her throat that, if he didn't know her better, he might have classified as a growl. He waited, expectantly, hoping for her trademark words of wisdom, but she didn't break the silence. She offered no comfort, no hug, offered no plan, no way out. She just sat and stared. She sat and stared even when he tried to make conversation, sat and stared when he called out to her, teased her, rattled his chains to get her attention. Sat and stared as he shouted until his throat was hoarse, begging and pleading for just a word.

Just a word...

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He couldn't go ghost either. It was the first thing he'd tried upon waking up in this dark room, but he hadn't been able to. His rings fizzled out each time he tried to call them into existence, leaving him more and more exhausted with every attempt. Next he tried to reach his intangibility, thinking that perhaps he didn't need to fully engage his ghost side to escape. If he could just use this one power, he could slip right out of his prison. But he couldn't. Not that he could really tell much of a difference, but he didn't even think he managed invisibility, much less intangibility. There must be something in the metal stopping him from using his powers. That or he was going mad.

He wished that Tucker were here, with his easy quips to lighten up the mood, or fail so badly at lightening up the mood that at least he would at least have something to laugh at. Someone to share theories with; maybe the techno geek would be able to figure out what was up with his handcuffs. But simply having someone here at his side, sharing in the misery would make him feel better. Make him feel like there was someone here beside him who would hold him up and keep him from despairing of getting out and away from the walls that seemed to be closing in on him every time he checked. He wanted to know that someone would be with him when he was here and they would be with him when he got out.

He could stay as long as someone stayed beside him.

He could stay until Tucker came into the room, clunking over so quickly in his boots that Danny was sure he was going to trip. He came with a soft touch and a reassuring smile, hooking up his PDA to a magically appearing port on the handcuffs. He pressed buttons quickly and confidently, but nothing happened. He tried again and again and finally tried something new as he bit his lip. The chains sparked and fizzled, making Danny scream in pain and flash back to his accident. The energy burst was enough to completely fry Tucker's equipment, but it did nothing to the chains. Tucker thought for a moment, and then, unable to do anything else, left Danny sitting alone in the room.

Danny waited for hours before he realized that he wasn't coming back.

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Danny didn't know if he would rather be mad or restrained by ghost-proof handcuffs. Insanity was never pleasant, but if there really was something in his cuffs preventing him from using his ghost powers to escape, it meant that whoever had caught him, whoever was behind this, knew all about him and exactly how he worked. Which meant that escape might not be so easy as he had to hope. But it had to be. He had to get out of here soon. This was a nightmare, waiting, being plagued by his thoughts, tormented by his dreams. Waking up to nothing but utter blackness and an ever more claustrophobic captivity. It was hard not to lose hope as day began to blur into night, nightmare into reality.

He needed to get through it, though; get his mind off it because wallowing in self pity only made things seem worse than they really were. He had been through worse than this, seen death's door and walked on by. He would survive; he would make it through. He could survive some cuts and bruises and aches and pains. He survived it every night. His fully human team – his human enemies – survived it every attack they suffered. Val had given and taken worse than this during their skirmished together. He was supposed to be the hero here, he could take it. For Val's sake, he would survive.

He would take it for the girl who had gone through hell because of him.

He would take it until she flew into the room on her hover board, every deadly weapon Vlad had ever designed for her aiming at him, just seconds away from obliterating him, or frying him to a crisp, or splattering his two-toned blood across the walls. Her dark eyes, which once looked at him with such genuine friendship, even perhaps love at a time, now burned as bright red as the suit she donned to fight him. She flew closer and closer, taking in the scene before her, seeing him—seeing all of Danny, knowing him for what he was—and decided that his human side didn't matter. Not to her. Not when he had done so much wrong. Her foot tapped to activate everything.

He stared into her soulless red eyes.

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Danny wanted it all to stop. He didn't want to think about any of this anymore; he wanted to just sit there and become oblivious to it all. He hurt deep down to the core of his essence. His mind, his heart, his soul, his body. It all ached. The unforgiving wall dug into the tender flesh of his back, his wrists bled freely, his head throbbed, the cuts and burns on his body stung enough to make him hiss at contact and groan when he moved in order to hold back the scream of pain that threatened to escape him.

He closed his eyes, wishing to sink into oblivion, welcoming the blackness that was even darker than his surroundings. Black as Sam's hair. But with that thought, he sat up straight. Through the haze in his mind, he could hold onto the thought of Sam. Individual, outspoken, never to be deterred from her point of view Sam. If she were here, she would be telling him to snap out of it, to stop feeling sorry for himself and his battered body but to stand up and fight back, whenever he could, however he could, no matter how badly he was hurt. Even while he was stuck here, she would act like nothing was wrong, just to tick off whoever had put her here. She would show them that she wasn't down for the count. He would have to as well.

He could keep his heart strong with Sam on his side.

He could keep his heart strong until she opened the door, made eye contact for a long moment, and walked away.

He screamed after her, a wordless cry of his agony and heartbreak.

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He finally refused to sleep, convinced that they would visit him in his dreams with guns and cruel words. He knew in his head that it was all wrong, that they would never (they would never) yell at him, blame him, abandon him, hurt him. But he saw it with his own eyes, again and again; he watched them do it. He could feel it. If he slept, they would invade his dreams and he would not be able to escape them. The twisted (they were twisted, weren't they? They wouldn't really say those things, would they? They wouldn't... would never... but... he couldn't remember anymore) versions of his friends would make him crack that much more. He tried to stay strong, he really did, but what was he to do when his pillars of strength turned against him every time he tried to escape the pain? So he simply decided not to sleep.

Instead he cried. Hot, salty tears pouring down his face as empty sobs wracked his frame, filling the room with harsh noises no one heard.

But they would be right beside him if he imagined it. They would have comforting words for him when they came. Even if they hadn't come for him yet, they would never (never) abandon him here to this endless fate. He could trust them to save him.

He could trust them until the door opened again...

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**Wow, I got all emotional when writing this, which never happens. :'3 Comments would be lovely (did the structure and style work?), especially since in a few years, I may write the back story and aftermath. Maybe. ;)**

**For a list of other Danniversary fics (and other recommendations) check out my new blog:** fanfictionershq. weebly. com/sapphireswimming


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